Congress Has Found A New Bogeyman: Google

One of the truisms of business is that you can't beat the United
States government.

Over the years, many companies thought that they could, from US
Steel to Microsoft. They all lost.

So these days, companies make sure that they maintain full-scale
lobbying operations in Washington, DC and that their senior
people are active in fund-raising efforts for both parties.

Google has long imagined that since it "did no evil," the normal
rules didn't apply to them. This conceit has now run into a
new reality. The National Journal
reports:

Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX), cochairmen of
the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus and longtime members of the House
Energy and Commerce Committee, don’t agree on much. But after
Google was caught last month collecting Social Security
information from children who took part in its annual doodling
contest, the lawmakers set aside their differences. In a scathing
joint statement, they called the action “unacceptable.”

The rebuke was just the latest in a series from lawmakers in both
parties, and it highlights a deeper problem for the online giant:
Its star is falling fast in Washington. Long the darling of the
technology community, Google had carefully cultivated an image of
corporate responsibility with its “Don’t Be Evil” motto and its
mission “to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.” But in recent years, the
company has distanced itself not only from the motto but also the
principles behind it, say experts who monitor its business
practices.

And members of Congress are noticing. In recent months, they’ve
criticized Google for its proposed acquisition of an online
travel-reservations company; a privacy breach involving the
collection of unsecured wireless data; and its short-lived effort
to circumvent tough new Internet regulations. “There is an
awareness that Google just isn’t exactly the warm, fuzzy, cuddly,
little start-up that everybody loved [and] that we thought it
was,” said John Simpson, director of the Inside Google project
for Consumer Watchdog, a Los Angeles-based non­profit and fierce
critic of the company. “It’s such an all-pervasive force in
everyone’s lives that it’s coming under scrutiny—and deservedly
so.”

Google, of course, is not naive. They maintain a vast
lobbying operation in Washington and a number of their senior
executives are fund-raisers and bundlers for President
Obama. (A "bundler" is someone who raises a bundle of money
from friends and business associates). At a recent dinner
meeting in San Francisco, called the "Tech Bundlers Ball" by one
Washington veteran,
Google was well-represented.

So it seems unlikely, to say the least, that the Obama
Administration will allow its Justice Department to do anything
like what the
Clinton Justice Department did to Microsoft back in the late
1990s. But the problem for Google is that Congressional
investigations mean subpoenas and subpoenas find trouble.
Trouble for Google.